Bathroom worktops and vanity tops in Wood Lane

Yes. Wood Lane is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W12. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hammersmith and Fulham. The goods lift has its own booking sheet, and a bay slot without a lift slot only gets the stone as far as the lobby. A vanity fit is a short visit with one or two pieces in it, so the van stands only for as long as it takes to walk them in. A vanity delivery is minutes at the kerb, not hours. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

Floors are chipboard deck on timber joists, which moves enough that level is taken with the units loaded rather than empty. Bathrooms in these are square, plumb and finished before anyone moves in, so the template is short work and the whole question becomes what the unit is fixed to. Concrete walls take a bracket well and a chase badly. Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. Bathrooms carry the same problems in a smaller room, and a smaller room leaves a vanity nowhere to absorb them. The scribe on a vanity is measured in depth it cannot spare.

Concierge buildings want the goods entrance, a booked lift and proof of insurance, all of which is straightforward when it is asked for a week out. A vanity is the one piece of stone that route will not usually defeat, because a top cut to a standard unit depth weighs what one person can manage. Protection goes down the stairs as well as along the hall. A bay shared across a parade of shops turns over all day, so the arrival time matters more than the length of the booking does. Where the van cannot wait, the top, the shelves and the adhesive all come in on the first trip and the van goes. One trip in with the top, the shelves and the adhesive.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop templating. That is about what people have here rather than how it gets done. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. Work of that kind brings en-suites with it, and an en-suite vanity is a smaller piece again carrying exactly the same four operations. Several small tops nest better than one large one. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. Where several bathrooms are done in one building the tops come off one slab run, because two greys from two batches sit badly on adjoining floors. The bathroom schedule follows the plumber, not the programme.

An island is a single visible piece with four finished edges and no wall to hide against, so it is the piece the whole kitchen is judged on. That shape decides what is left on the slab when the kitchen has been cut, and what is left on the slab is where most vanity tops come from. Shelves and a window board come out of the same corner of the slab. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. A vanity has no depth to lose, so where a kitchen run would take a ten millimetre scribe without noticing, a shallow top cannot spare it. A sloping floor is corrected under the unit, not under the stone. Confirm the unit depth for each bathroom separately, book the lift if the building wants it booked, and have both taps on site. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. Who is paying decides the material here more than anywhere else, because a vanity is small enough that an expensive stone stops being an expensive decision. Nothing in a vanity quote is bundled into the kitchen.

A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. Bollards, planters and a one-way service road can turn what looks like a ten-metre carry into a fifty-metre one. The exception is a double vanity, which is a kitchen length in bathroom width and behaves like a worktop from the tail lift onwards. A vanity top is lifted once and set down once.

If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. If the island is a few hundred millimetres longer than the usable length of a slab, a second slab gets bought to gain that overhang, and the whole slab is paid for rather than the part used. A bathroom ordered with the kitchen is taken from the same slab run, so the two rooms match rather than nearly match. The bathroom order is cheapest while the kitchen is still open.

Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. A wall-hung unit puts the whole weight into the wall rather than onto the floor, so what the wall is built of stops being a detail. The tap has to clear the reveal before the hole is drilled.

Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. It is quoted by area like the worktop, so a long run is a material line rather than a trim. A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. A gated development controls when a van gets in, where it can stand and for how long, and none of that gets decided on the morning. Partition walls are plasterboard on studs, and a wall-hung vanity carrying stone wants timber behind the board rather than fixings into plasterboard alone. A boxed riser in the corner is the usual obstacle upstairs.